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Medan

It’s amazing how a word travels through the roads and seas. Told you before (in Facebook) I watched documentary of Egypt’s Tahrir Square (الميدان – al-Midan) and found on reddit that it’s screened amidst Ukraine’s Maidan movement. And like, wait. why are the words similar? After some word-stalking, I found that they indeed means the same: open square/field (“lapangan” in Indonesian). It was because of the Turco-Persian transmission in 9-10 AD (the Ukrainian word got its origin from Persian ميدان – meydan).

And guess what? That word also found its way to Indonesia: “medan”, which means a field. It’s still used in the same sense I guess (remember Medan Merdeka aka lapangan Monas? It’s in the center of Jakarta where Indonesian presidential palace is located – Medan Merdeka Utara).